The Princess Predicament (6 page)

She let out a wistful sigh. “I know.”

She’d been leaving earlier, and in a disguise, because everyone knew where she was now. He couldn’t blame her for wanting to stay hidden.

“Where were you going?” he asked again.

She chuckled but without humor. “You really are just like everyone else,” she mused. “You think I’m an idiot. But you shouldn’t believe my image. It’s a lie just like the rest of my life has been.”

He’d already learned that for himself.

She lifted her chin with stubbornness and pride. “I’m not telling you where I’m going.”

“Fine,” he said. “I’ll tell
you.
You’re going with me.” Back to St. Pierre? Could he bring her back there? To the family who’d lied to her? To the stranger she didn’t want to marry?

His stomach churned with revulsion over the thought of her marrying anyone, of her lying in anyone else’s bed, in anyone else’s arms...

He forced away the repugnance and the twinges of jealousy. He had no right to either. Unless...

“We are leaving,” he continued. “As soon as you tell me who the father of your baby is.”

She flinched, as if he’d slapped her. Or insulted her. Because she’d often been photographed with movie stars and athletes, the media had painted her as a promiscuous princess. But he had intimately learned exactly how wrong they had been about her—as wrong as when they’d claimed she was ditzy.

She was neither.

“You’ve been working for my father too long,” she said. From the disdain in her voice, the comment was obviously more complaint than compliment. “You’re beginning to act just like him.”

He winced now, definitely offended. Fortunately he had only been hired to protect the man, not to like him. King St. Pierre was tough to like. He was a difficult man. Period.

“Since I do work for your father, I need to carry out his orders,” Whit replied, choosing to ignore the insult and focus on what was more important. “He wants you safely back in St. Pierre.”

She snorted—a sound he would have thought her entirely too ladylike to make. Wouldn’t some princess etiquette class in one of those fancy boarding schools she’d attended have polished the ability to snort right out of her?

She lifted her chin again, looking every bit the royal ruler despite her dirty jeans and blouse. “You’re crazy to think I will be safe in St. Pierre.”

He might have agreed with her if he hadn’t just re-established his friendship with Aaron. He trusted that man with his life and hers. “You’ll be safer there than you are here where you were just nearly abducted and shot at...”

She might have been right about it being a crime of opportunity. Maybe it was just a dangerous country with dangerous men. Maybe he hadn’t been followed straight to her...

“That can happen in St. Pierre, too,” she pointed out.

“I will make sure it doesn’t happen,” he said. “I will protect you.” And with Aaron and Charlotte helping, he had a good possibility of actually keeping her safe.

“You will protect me from kidnappers and killers,” she agreed—again with that damn calmness that infuriated him. “But will you protect me from my father?”

He couldn’t say that her father wouldn’t hurt her—because he already had. With his lies. With his manipulations...

Maybe she had learned some of her father’s moves because she had veered the conversation away from what he wanted to know. She’d stalled him long enough. Maybe it was her form of payback for having had to wait twenty-four years before she’d learned the truth.

“Gabby,” he began, about to urge her to stop the cycle of secrets now.

But the roar of a Jeep engine drew his attention to the doorway. If he’d missed a tail from the airport, he had lost his ability to do his job properly—then he couldn’t protect the princess.

But there was only one man in the Jeep. Both the man and the vehicle must have been familiar to the kids because they came out of nowhere to greet him, dancing around his feet like puppies as he hopped out of the vehicle. The kids hadn’t greeted him and Gabby like that. Maybe they’d been in class. Or maybe they had been taught to never approach a strange vehicle or a strange man. This man wasn’t unfamiliar to them.

Despite the black medical bag clutched in his hand, he looked too young to be a doctor.

Whit should have cancelled the house call Lydia had arranged; he didn’t need a doctor. He needed the truth from the princess; he needed to know the paternity of her baby.

“Gabriella,” the man said. With the familiarity of a frequent visitor, he stepped through the hut doorway without knocking and waiting for her permission to enter. “I am sorry I took so long getting away from the clinic.”

She offered this man the smile she used to give Whit when they’d first met. It was a smile full of warmth and welcome and beauty. Whit wondered if she would ever smile that way at him again.

“Dominic, it’s fine,” she assured the doctor, her concern for Whit’s injury obviously long forgotten. “I know how busy you are.”

The guy answered her smile with a wide grin. Not only was he young but good-looking, too, since women seemed to like that whole tall and dark thing. Or at least that was what he’d witnessed with the women who’d gone for Aaron Timmer over the years. As easily as his partner had fallen for women, they had responded to him, too.

This guy also had charm. His grin widened as he took Gabby’s hand in his with a familiarity and possessiveness that had Whit gritting his teeth. “If you had been the patient, I would have dropped everything...”

For her. Not for Whit. The doctor had clearly fallen for the princess.

Maybe Whit had been wrong to assume the child she carried was his. Maybe her baby belonged to this man.

Whit should have been relieved that he might not be the father. But his heart dropped with regret. And then possessiveness gripped him.

He did not want Princess Gabriella or the baby she carried belonging to any man but him.

Chapter Six

“The doctor gave me a clean bill of health.”

Aaron Timmer grinned at the news. He was apparently as relieved as she was that their baby was all right. But Charlotte wasn’t worried only about the baby she carried. She was worried about the baby sister she’d failed to protect as she’d sworn she would.

“I’m clear to travel,” she said. “Clear to do my job.”

Aaron shook his head. “You don’t have a job anymore,” he reminded her. “The king doesn’t want you working for him.”

King St. Pierre claimed that he wanted Charlotte as a daughter now, not as an employee. But she worried that he’d dismissed her because he no longer trusted her to safeguard the princess—not after she had already failed. Charlotte had spent six months in captivity and during that time all kinds of unimaginable horrors could have happened to Gabriella—since she’d been left completely unprotected.

“She’s pregnant, too,” Charlotte said, as with awe, she remembered her aunt’s words the first time they had talked. The phone connection hadn’t been good, but she’d not misinterpreted that.

Aaron sighed. “Did you tell your father that news?”

Charlotte tensed—not used to thinking of the king as her father even though she’d known for a few years now. Gabby had just discovered her real parentage. So she was dealing with all those conflicting emotions while she was going to become a mother herself.

“I haven’t told him yet,” Charlotte admitted. “I’m concerned...”

“About how he will react?”

The king had never treated Gabby with the respect she deserved. He’d never treated her like what she was—an independent, modern woman. “He already arranged for her to marry another man.”

“You don’t think the baby she’s carrying is Prince Tonio Malamatos’s?” Aaron asked, referring to Gabby’s fiancé.

The prince had been waiting at the palace when they arrived. As soon as the king had notified him that the princess had been found, he had come from his country with an entourage that included his ex-fiancée. When Charlotte had stepped off the plane, he’d mistaken her for Gabby and tried to embrace her. She shuddered as she remembered the man’s clammy hands touching her arms, of his pasty cheek trying to press against hers.

Gabby never would have let that man touch her. Charlotte shook her head. “And neither do you. You know who the father is.”

He expelled a ragged sigh. “Whit. If they’d been involved before she disappeared, it would explain why he was acting so strangely when you and Gabby went missing.” Aaron had admitted that he’d been suspicious his old partner had been involved in their disappearances. “And why he was so anxious to bring her back once you told him where she was.”

“I knew she had a crush on him,” Charlotte admitted. “But I hadn’t thought Whit would ever act on her vulnerability to him.”

“Neither did I,” Aaron admitted. “He’s always been the professional, unemotional one.”

Charlotte smiled as she thought of her sister. “Gabby has a way of getting to a person, of stealing her way into your heart.”

But that hadn’t worked with their real mother or with the queen. The person actually had to have a heart for Gabby to work her way inside. From everything Charlotte had heard about him, Whitaker Howell didn’t have a heart either. But he had acted very worried about Gabriella and her safety.

Charlotte was also anxious about her sister. “I hope she’s had access to medical care. And that she’s not in need of it now.”

“She’s fine,” Aaron said, referring back to Charlotte’s most recent conversation with her aunt, who had called the palace at Whit’s request. “Whit rescued her at the airport.”

Charlotte breathed a soft sigh of relief. Whit had saved her. Just because he’d been doing his job? Or because he cared about Gabby?

In order to board the royal jet and return to St. Pierre, they would have to go back to the airport. And what if the gunmen were waiting there to try to grab Princess Gabriella again?

“We still should be there, too,” Charlotte insisted. While the doctor had cleared her for flight and work, he’d cautioned her to take it easy. She’d been restrained to a bed for the past six months, so she’d lost some of her strength and stamina.

“The other jet has already taken off,” Aaron said. “They’re hours ahead of us and may have already landed.”

“But they’re not you and me,” she pointed out. “And I’m not sure if Whit should trust anyone but you and me.” Not with his life and certainly not with Gabby’s.

Aaron snorted. “That shouldn’t be a problem since Whit rarely trusts anyone.”

“That’s what’s kept him alive for the past thirty years,” Charlotte pointed out. But the problem was that he was traveling with a woman who trusted everyone, who always saw the good in people no matter what they’d done. Gabby would forgive Charlotte—eventually. But she wouldn’t be able to do that unless Whit could keep her alive.

* * *

S
IX
MONTHS
AGO
Whit had been willing to let her marry another man, but today he had barely let the doctor speak to her before he’d ushered Dominic Delgado back to his Jeep. Dominic was an irrepressible flirt. Was Whit jealous?

Hope fluttered in her heart—and in her belly as the baby kicked with excitement. Could Whit care enough to feel jealousy?

He strode back through the doorway. “We have to leave now. The royal jet may have already landed.”

So he hadn’t been jealous at all. Just impatient to carry out his orders to bring her back to St. Pierre and her father. Disappointment quelled her flash of hope. But then she didn’t want him to be jealous of her. Because if Prince Linus had been acting of his own accord and not his father’s, then it must have been his jealousy that had cost Charlotte six months of her life.

She doubted he’d acted alone, though, because she doubted he’d cared enough to be jealous of her.

“You really want to bring me back to St. Pierre?” she asked. And her disappointment grew.

She had been right to leave him six months ago. Despite that night they’d shared, he hadn’t cared anything for her—not enough to stop her from leaving. Not enough to stop her from marrying another man.

“You need to go back to St. Pierre,” he stubbornly insisted. A muscle in his lean cheek, beneath the couple of days’ worth of stubble and above his tightly clenched jaw, twitched.

“Why?” she asked. Nobody on St. Pierre genuinely cared for her—at least not enough to have ever been honest with her. “So my father can force me to marry Prince Tonio Malamatos?”

“That is not the reason why the king wants you home,” Whit said.

She wasn’t foolish enough to entertain any flutters of hope this time. Her question was more rhetorical than curious; despite the secrets he’d kept, she still knew her father well. Too well. “So he’s broken that engagement for me, too?”

Good thing her question had been rhetorical because he didn’t answer it. That muscle just twitched in his cheek again.

“Maybe Prince Tonio took my disappearance as a rejection and resumed his engagement to my cousin?” Actually Honora Del Cachon wasn’t her cousin since Gabby wasn’t really the queen’s daughter. Like the queen, Honora had never liked Gabby, either. The night of the ball—when she’d been publicly humiliated—instead of blaming the king, Honora had glared at Gabby with such hatred that she shuddered even now, remembering it. “They could actually be married by now.” And she fervently hoped that they were.

Whit shook his head. “Prince Malamatos refused to break your engagement until he had proof that you were dead.”

“He waited for me?” she asked. Unlike Prince Linus, he didn’t even know her. They had only met a few times over her lifetime, and had rarely spoken more than a couple of words to each other. So his loyalty wasn’t personal.

Was her country that important to him?

Whit jerked his chin up and down in a rough nod. And for a second she wondered if he’d read her mind. But he probably only meant that the prince had waited for her.

“So he still intends to marry me when I return?” Panic rushed up on her now, so that she struggled to draw a deep breath. “And my father will expect me to obey his royal command and marry the prince.”

“You can talk to him this time,” Whit said, “instead of running away.”

His words stung her pride. “You think I ran away six months ago?”

He gave a sharp nod. “I know that’s what you did.”

“I was threatened,” she reminded him. Physically and emotionally. “And Charlotte thought I would be safer here.” From both threats.

“Charlotte thought wrong.”

“I was safe for six months,” she said. And happy, despite feeling like a fool for giving her love to a man without a heart and for believing her family’s lies. “I was safe until you came here.”

He flinched but didn’t deny that he might be responsible for the danger she’d stumbled into at the airport. “You’re not safe anymore,” he said. “We need to leave.”

Distress attacked her again, making her heart race and her stomach flip. “You don’t care about me.” She’d realized that long ago but it still hurt to know she’d given him so much and he’d given her so little.

She touched her belly. Actually he’d given her much more than he’d realized.

“Gabby,” he said, his breath expelling in a ragged sigh of exasperation. Then he lifted his arms and reached for her, as if he intended to offer her comfort or reassurance.

But she held up a hand between them, holding him off. “And that’s fine. I don’t care that you don’t care what’ll happen to me on St. Pierre. But what about your baby? Don’t you worry what will happen to him?”

There. She’d done it—she’d told him the truth. He was about to be a father.

But why would he care since he obviously didn’t spare a thought for the baby’s mother? She would try not to take it personally; perhaps Whit Howell cared about nothing and no one.

* * *

A
LL
THE
BLOOD
rushed from Whit’s head, leaving him dizzy while heat rushed to his face. Sweat beaded on his brow. He brushed it away with a shaky hand. Maybe he should have let the doctor examine him, so he could have known for sure that he wasn’t on the verge of having a stroke.

His heart raced, pounding fast and hard. And his lungs were too constricted for him to draw a deep breath. He had been in some of the most dangerous places and situations in the world, but he’d never felt such panic and fear before.

“Are you all right?” Gabby asked. Moments ago she’d pushed him away, but now she reached for him, her small hands grasping his forearms.

He nodded. But it was a lie. He wasn’t all right. He was about to become a father—one of several things he’d sworn he would never be: a father, a husband, a besotted lover...

By leaving them, his mother had destroyed his father, sinking him deeper into the bottle, so that he hadn’t been able to hold a job. Three years ago, when Whit had lost a job and struggled to get another, he’d felt like he was becoming his old man. And he had become more determined than ever to not even risk it. That was why he’d put up with the king and his asinine royal commands—because he hadn’t wanted to lose another job. But now he risked losing so much more than just a job.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

She jerked her hands off his arms as if his skin had burned her. Maybe it had. He felt like his face was on fire. And he still couldn’t draw a deep breath.

But then she lifted her face toward his, and her big brown eyes were bright with indignation. “You know there was only you...”

His muscles tensed like they had that night when he’d realized she was a virgin, that despite all the media reports to the contrary, she had never been promiscuous. She had never been with another man before. Whit had tried to pull back, had tried to stop, but they’d both been too overcome with passion. And she’d urged him to take her—to take her innocence.

He’d done it because he’d wanted her so much and because he had really believed she’d wanted him. But the next morning when he’d returned to his room to change his clothes so that no one would realize that he’d spent the night with her, she had packed up and booked her flight to Paris. And he’d realized that he’d probably just been an act of rebellion for her, that she’d used him as revenge against her father.

“I know that I was the only one before you disappeared.” He heard the Jeep’s engine droning in the distance. “But you’ve been here six months...” Close to a man who had obviously fallen for her.

She lifted her hand, as if she intended to slap him, but then she drew in a breath and her control. And instead of touching him, she pressed her palm to her belly. “I am six months along. I was already pregnant when I came here.”

He waited for more, waited for her to assure him that she’d slept with no other man but him. She offered no such assurances about her love life.

She only assured him, “This baby is yours.”

But only the baby. She was not his. And she would never be.

If he brought her back to St. Pierre, her father might very well do as she feared; he might force her into marrying a strange prince. It was King St. Pierre’s country, his rules. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to let his princess become involved with a bodyguard.

“Where were you going?” he asked.

She blinked and then narrowed her eyes in confusion. “Six months ago?”

“No. Today,” he clarified. “At the airport. If you had time to buy a ticket, where were you going to go?”

“The United States.”

She’d be safer there than St. Pierre.

“Any state in particular?” he wondered.

She pressed her lips together, as if refusing to answer him. Obviously she still intended to give him the slip, and she didn’t want to make it easy for him to find her again.

“I’m not letting you out of my sight,” he said. Especially not after what had happened at the airport. She could have been kidnapped or killed. And if he took his eyes off her for a moment, she would try to lose him again—leaving herself and their baby vulnerable.

Their baby?

He waited for the panic to surge back, but he could still breathe. His heart was beating—strong and steady—instead of the frantic pace it had when he’d first realized her baby was really his.